#sonny smith

10/6/24.

Hector J. Guerra is the main impetus behind the band hhhhhh. The band appears to be Los Angeles based. I heard about this release via Austin Town Hall. Nathan Lankford described it as a "classical brand of paisley psychedelia." When I think of that I think of bands like Rain Parade, Green on Red and Three O'Clock.

While I agree that there is a definite psychedelic feel to this, I wouldn't necessarily call it classic paisley (although the song "return receipt" definitely has a classic feel). To me, it recalls the work of Sonny Smith (Sonny & The Sunsets) combined with more folky sounds like Kings of Convenience.

The Daycare Academy!

The Sauber Academy!

(Imagine the team meetings tho, JM & Dexter & Thèo and da children)

Update: Théo is now 18, I managed to do this list just one day before his brithday-

Former members of the academy:

- Esteban Gutiérrez (2010-2012)

- Robin Frijns (2012-2013)

- Sergey Sirotkin (2013-2014)

- Simona de Silvestro (2014)

- Tatiana Calderón (2017-2020)

- Callum Illot (2019)

- Lirim Zendeli (2019)

- Fabio Scherer (2019)

- Raoul Hyman (2019)

- Arthur Leclerc (2019)

- Roman Staněk (2019)

- Alessandro Ghiretti (2019)

- Stuart White (2019)

- Joshua Dufek (2019)

- Ugo Ugochukwu (2020)

- Petr Ptáček (2020)

- Harry Thompson (2020)

- Piotr Czaja (2020)

Can't include the background cuz of the photolimit.

Other academies:

Ferrari Driver Academy

Mercedes Junior Team

Williams Driver Academy

McLaren Young Driver Programme

1/22/21.

Last summer I bought The Gonks and Galore releases from Rocks In Your Head Records (San Francisco).  The label (run by Sonny Smith) continues its streak of great releases with Fake Fruit (Oakland, CA).  It appears that Hannah D’Amato is the chief songwriter of the band.

Of this release, the Bandcamp page states, “Fake Fruit distill Pink Flag era Wire, Pylon, and Mazzy Star to expound on the absurdity of modern life.”  The album is mastered by Mikey Young, and “No Mutuals” definitely has a Eddy Current Suppression Ring vibe.

8/5/20.

This is it...I promise.  I can make this promise because I think this is it for the physical releases from Rocks In Your Head Records.  Previously, I posted about The Gonks and Galore.  Well, upon further snooping I found “Hot, Sick, Vile and Fun” - a compilation of San Francisco bands.

Galore is here as are The Gonks.  But there is so much more.  Rays, Cindy, and Tony Jay are bands that I previously mentioned.  But, I’ve been smitten by contributions from Advice Gurus, and Preschool.  There is a lot to listen to here.  

12/14/19.

I’m not sure how I ran across Raj Sablok, but I’ve been listening to his music non-stop for the past couple of days.  He is from San Francisco, California.  John Vanderslice says, “A one in a million songwriter! He’s written and recorded hundreds of excellent songs in the past few years.“

I would emphasize the “hundreds of excellent songs”.  Each offering on Bandcamp contains at least 88 songs (most contain 100...thus the “100s”).  Volume 3 is the only offering with a reasonably priced physical copy.  Volume 4 is outstanding, but only 4 physical copies exist at $1000 each.  Yikes.

Raj Sablok’s music is most definitely indie/rock based.  But as you could imagine, with 100 songs (and none of them too short) there are a variety of sounds.  I hear Sonny Smith, Dick Stusso, and Lawrence Arabia.  Sometimes there’s a piano that reminds me of my parents Roger Williams collection.  Raj’s sheer volume of work also reminds me of Momus (Nick Currie) and Ireland’s Laurie Shaw.  And his guitar virtuosity heads into the Ben Sereten/Neil Young realm of sound.